


A long walk on the road to damnation, a short knock on the devils door

by Khadgarfield



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Angst, Hate Sex, Knotting, M/M, No Happy Ending Only Ragrets, Semi-dubious consent if u squint, Violent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:35:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28448532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khadgarfield/pseuds/Khadgarfield
Summary: Genn finds out about the haunting at the Marris Stead before anyone else, and takes a moment out of his morning to visit before the kill squad arrives.
Relationships: Nathanos Blightcaller/Genn Greymane
Comments: 13
Kudos: 22





	A long walk on the road to damnation, a short knock on the devils door

**Author's Note:**

> Im still trying to workshop a way to write this ship in a way thats less... volatile. wish me godspeed.
> 
> Thanks n love to tha squad for giving feedback on my Nath characterization. i always find it daunting writing a character for the first time.

Genn had thought about this moment ceaselessly. Over and over again, it had cycled through his mind, until the script for the scene felt like it might have been a part of his identity. Standing here in the moment, though, he found that the knowledge of how it should unfold evaded him like a dream after waking.

Perhaps he never really thought it would play out like this, after all.

The man (Creature) known as Nathanos Blightcaller seemed small with the desolate acreage of Marris Stead looming behind him, yet he seemed larger without the shadow of the Banshee falling over his shoulder. Genn’s fist tightened on the crumpled parchment, as he stood on the crest of a nearby hill and watched the sunrise limn the silhouette of something that _looked_ like a person bow at the knees, to pick up a crooked stick jutting out of the mud. Beside him, a pair of hounds capered, and Genn felt pity for the wretched creatures that had died and risen countless times for the sake of their master. They were just like the Blightcaller himself, Genn supposed. Just like the corpse who shambled for the sake of his queen, yet _still_ somehow had the audacity to call Genn the ‘dog’.

A breeze whispered across the gnarled, barren land. Genn’s coattails billowed, the hair on the nape of his neck prickling in the chilly lick of dawn. His sharp eyes noticed the shadowy shape below him hesitate, for a second, as though the Blightcaller had suddenly become aware he was no longer alone. The moment passed - he relaxed again and tossed the stick far across the field. His pets bounded after it.

Genn inhaled deeply, steeled himself, and began to stride down the hill.

He didn’t know why he felt like this. He had _never_ felt this hesitant when he was confronted with Sylvanas. Sylvanas though, was an easy creature to hate. She had needled him often, spearheaded everything that had caused him grief. She had mocked him in the moments he had been most exposed and her callousness had ultimately culminated in the death of all things dear to him. Nathanos however…

In a way, Genn probably felt pity for the wretch. He would never admit as much, or even entertain the thought for more than a few seconds, because Genn had always found it easier to loathe an enemy than to examine nuance. Often, he forgot how to recognize nuance at all. Perhaps if he didn’t, he may have had a better idea of why he had come here, the instant he heard the report from the young man on patrol.

He knew as he reached the bottom of the hill that he was going to need to cover his tracks about this. Send some champion back up later, to clean up his mess if any remained. He also knew, quite acutely, that Anduin could _never_ find out about this. Genn wasn’t sure that he could take it, if the young man looked at him again with that expression of compassion and disappointment in his eyes.

As he crossed the field, Genn could see the Blightcaller had definitely spotted him now.

He stood there, still as the dead, with one arm clutching a stick and dangling at his side. His hounds, sensing his shift in focus, had turned to Genn. They were poised with their hackles raised, thick ribbons of filthy spit dangling from their jaws. Genn thought they were disgusting creatures, really. Half rotted, barely recognizable as anything that might have been living, they had much in common with their master. Though from close up, Genn had to admit that Nathanos might have nearly passed as human.

The Blightcaller’s scent was the scent of death, but not fresh death, and his body was a testament to mumification over decay. Genn had heard rumors, that it wasn’t really his body, but even if it was his body in the literal sense it would never have been _his_ body, with emphasis. No-one who belonged to the Banshee queen really owned their own body. So what did that make him?

Perhaps there was some empathy to be found there too, then, woven neatly in-between the weft of pity. Genn also knew what it was like, to be a mind that dwelled in a body it didn’t recognise anymore. This sympathy alone held him in his human skin as he approached, and came to a stop not two metres away from the creature that had been instrumental in destroying everything he had loved.

“Ah,” His voice was deep, liquid with a smugness that made Genn’s skin crawl. “What have we here. The Boy King’s loyal pet here to dispose of me?”

“I’m here on my own accord,” Genn told him. “But yes. I have come here to kill you.”

“Really? That does make sense. Though you aren’t doing very well so far, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Impatient.” Genn’s eyes flickered down, to the growling creatures that flanked him, wondering if they would attack on command or if Genn would have to lay a hand on the revenant, first. “I thought you might appreciate an opportunity to beg for mercy.”

“Mercy?” Nathanos laughed, “From you? I would rather choke.”

“That can be arranged.”

Genn drew himself up to his full height, and sunk his hands deep into the pockets of his coat. He had no weapon concealed there, just as he had no longer had a plan as to how this might unfold. He had thought the Blightcaller would try and attack him the moment he had realized he was here, and he was only just starting to think that the fact he hadn’t was… disconcerting. Which of them was going to make the first strike? Genn felt the press of his teeth, as they sharpened against his tongue.

Nathanos cocked his head, eyes narrowing an increment, and signaled to his hounds to stand down.

“If we are going to talk before you kill me,” He said coldly, “We should do the talking in the house. I would hate to be interrupted by a band of rogues or vagrants out for my blood.”

 _Or lack thereof,_ Genn thought to himself.

“If you think I am going to go in that shack with you, you must think I’m an idiot.”

“I do. You are. And yet… You will come with me because you want to know what I have to say. For all you know, I may have word of… well.”

_Sylvanas._

Genn felt his guts lurch into his chest. He wondered why his hand still stayed. Why he hadn’t reached forward, seized the man by the neck, and torn his throat out yet. That was how it had played out in his mind, though the more he tried to remember the less he could be sure. His recollection of his intention was becoming muddled by the amazement that he was here, now, face to face with this monster. This was really happening after so fucking long and Genn _still hadn’t killed him!_

 _“_ Very well,” He heard himself say, and the corners of the Blightcaller’s mouth curled up in satisfaction. He gestured to Genn that he should follow, and turned with a flourish of his ranger's cape. The thing was old and rotted, and hung from his shoulders like a murderer hanging from the gallows.

Genn followed him into the house, a broken, tired building that he had heard once belonged to the Banshee’s champion when he was a man. The blighthounds did not cross the threshold, as though they had been trained not to, and Genn needed to bow in order to fit through the gaping maw which barely still resembled a doorway.

“Welcome to my humble home,” Nathanos said, and the rotted wood, warped with moisture leaching through the ground, groaned under the quiet thump of his footfalls. The gloom inside the cabin was profound, though shafts of dawnlight did pass through grimy windows and illuminate filthy squares on the walls. Genn could make out the ruins of a table. The bones of an armchair. A fireplace loaded with refuse of a decade or more. Nathanos removed his bow from his belt and sat it down on the table. He removed his cloak from his shoulders too, and lay it carefully aside. It was a habit, Genn recognised, lingering from life. Though it was cold in the shadowy building, he knew the undead were impervious to temperature. The gesture was unsettlingly human, and it was strange that a habit like this would linger after so many years.

“Humble is generous,” Genn told him. “Of all the places you would come on your last morning, why would you choose to come here?”

Nathanos shrugged.

“I was feeling... nostalgic. Don’t you ever feel nostalgic?”

“No,” Genn scoffed, kicking a small pile of leaves and watching it scatter. The desiccated husks skated recklessly across the dusty floor of the shack. “Why would I? And If I did, what interest is it to you?”

“Really?” Nathanos’ eyes were dying embers, glowing through the low light. They were cunning eyes. Cruel eyes. Like the burning red aura around an eclipsing sun. “Not even for a cosy hearth in a familiar home? Not for the wine of your youth, or for a first kiss... not even for a redheaded child who used to sit on your knee?”

A dart of rage pierced him. Genn grit his teeth, closing the gap between them in a single step, and seized Nathanos by the front of his jacket. The fabric was stiff with dust, and the smell in the cloth was dry and vaguely acrid. It reminded Genn of the scent of burned wood.

“You have no right to ask me that,” He growled, “if you speak of him again, I will tear your tongue out of your mouth.”

“Just as you intend to kill me.” Nathanos twisted half-heartedly in his grip. “Something which you still have not done. It’s funny, I have heard you are many things, but a coward wasn’t one.”

“I’m no coward,” Genn spat, even as he could hear the echo in his skull chanting _kill him kill him kill him_ over and over again.

_Why is he still not dead?_

_“_ Seems to me as though you are,” those burning eyes deepened further, like pits that gave way to portals into the depths of countless hells. “You are afraid to kill me, because you can see we are the same. You don’t have the strength inside you to kill your reflection.”

A cold hand moved between them, a finger that had no pulse pressing against the side of his face. Genn hissed at the contact, his grip on the Blightcaller’s clothing growing tightener as a wave of ancient magic shivered through him. His change was at the back of his tongue, his clothing heavy and tight and restrictive, but _still_ he forced himself to remain human. He wasn’t entirely sure why, and the restraint was beginning to ache in his bones.

“We are not the same,” He insisted. “I am _better._ Better than you. And very much still living.”

“You bow to your master as I do, don’t you?”

“My master is noble and good.”

“Your master is a child. And you are a fool.” Nathanos paused for a moment, removing his finger from the side of Genn’s face and letting his hand fall carelessly to the side. “And your master would be ashamed if he knew you were here.”

Yes. This was true – Genn would be ashamed, just as he was ashamed every time his bitterness skewed his judgement when it came to the Banshee queen. As time wore on, He felt more and more as though Anduin was losing any admiration he had held for him, growing weary with the ceaseless anger that overrode everything. The worst part was that Genn knew it was a weakness all his own – one that might someday drive a wedge even further between them.

Genn couldn’t bear the thought of another son Sylvanas had snatched from his arms.

He growled, and wished with everything he was that he could find the strength to just kill him. He had already killed so many with his bare hands, and Nathanos should not have been any different but those _words_. Those words had become a strange echo, still ricocheting around inside his head.

The same.

The same.

Genn knew with a cold knot in his belly that he was right, he could not kill him. Not any more than he could kill himself.

He tried to swallow his emotions, but found they get caught like a small bone in his throat. Instead, he let himself lean in to bite him, to make an attempt to eat the creature whole, except he should have known that Nathanos would bite back. The images that flickered though his minds eye were images of a hybrid body - the ruins of a city, and the ruins of a man, and himself as the king of both of these things but lord of nothing at the same time. The Blightcaller tasted like ashes, bitter like freshly cremated flesh, and his kiss lingered like charcoal stuck between Genn’s teeth. Genn’s senses were flooded with an odor like rain on immolation, the air feeling dense like the cracking fracture of bones under heat - it shattered into needle shards along with his restraint, and his body throbbed with the curse of men who choked on mouthfuls of their own hubris.

At the door of the cabin, he could hear the hounds growling. Nathanos shifted his hands to curl tightly around Genn’s wrists. His nails were thick and hard, and sunk deeply into the skin across the meaty part by his thumb.

When they parted again, Genn was the only one panting for breath.

“I will kill you,” He insisted. “I will kill you again.”

“Not if I kill you first.”

Genn silenced him with another kiss. Nathanos let him take, and did not resist even when Genn felt his grasp on his humanity slipping away. His bones broke and splintered inside his flesh, magic ravaging his outlines, and suddenly the kiss was severed and his snout was pressing hard against Nathanos’ cheek. The Blightcaller sneered in disgust.

“You call me a repulsive creature,” He mused.

“I thought you were a dog person.”

“And I thought you were a Noble King.”

“I used to be. But we both know you _never_ thought that.”

Rough hands, clawed and dense with fur, lifted him effortlessly and cast him against the ramshackle table that rotted in the corner of the room. The impact made the wood crack, and Nathanos laughed, a harsh, cold laugh.

“Well, well, well, isn’t that abhorrent. What big claws you have. What big _teeth_ you have.”

“All the better to eat you with.” Genn growled, striding near and shoving Nathanos down so the back of his skull hit the surface of the table. “Though I wonder if cursed and bitter flesh will taste as sweet as fresh blood.”

“You speak so boldly,” He struggled in the pin, trying to right himself, “but you are a puppy who has never truly known the taste of blood.

Genn tightened his jaw. His mind reeled as he tried to think of a way to shut him up. To punish him for what he was saying. He was goading him on purpose, and Genn could see as much in the preternatural light still burning in the pits of his eyes. Genn realized he was drooling, even as the Blightcaller’s hands reached to tie in the fur at the sides of his neck. Genn faltered where he held him against the table, enough for his captive to drag himself upright, and his skin crawled in revulsion when the Creature’s tongue dragged up the length of one of Genn’s protruding canine teeth.

“Dispatch me to my lady,” He whispered, “and I will tell her you sent me.”

The instruction was rapturous, barely even a sigh. It was a sound that came from the depths of desiccated lungs, and rattled in the vacuum of his hollow, sunken chest. Genn felt the magic of the moon goddess thrum in his core, as he did in rare moments when his shift was most profound. The fury inside him stilled for a moment, and he _almost_ thought he could feel a quiet pulse of life behind the breastbone under his palm.

He knew what to do.

Nathanos didn’t even whimper when Genn forced him around and bent him over the table. His chest hit the wood, his hands splayed against the filthy surface, and a harsh, sobbing laugh pulled from his throat as Genn tore at the clothing on his back. The rotted mail and cotton gave way to a terrain of petrified muscle - his back was the well-formed back of an archer, even in undeath.

“You are right,” Genn admitted, raking a hand slowly down the valley of his spine. “I can’t find it in myself to kill something as miserable as you. My loyalty to Anduin stills my hand, maybe, or maybe I really do feel sorry for you. Even faced with death you have nothing to lose, because you are long since dead. One thing I will _always_ have over you is that I am still living, and do not intend to meet my makers yet.”

“Living and remaining among the living are functionally the same thing, wouldn’t you say?”

It was difficult to make out his words like this, but Genn felt a pull of satisfaction to hear a note of strain in his reply.

“Not at all,” He pressed closer against the body beneath him. “I think, that since I cannot kill you, I will give you a reminder of what it means to be _alive_.”

And oh, the thought of wielding such power over him felt like the perfect conclusion to a sordid, monstrous story. So perfect, in fact, that the greatest testament to life Genn could think of was already calling attention to itself, pressing rigid and thick against the back of Nathanos’ thigh.

“Please do,” came the low, mocking response. “How sweet might it be to feel something again, before I find myself feeling nothing at all.”

Genn made short work of Nathanos’ pants, and he fumbled himself hurriedly out of his own. Cognizant that he would never be able to prepare him with sharp claws, he made do by simply dragging his tongue over his fingers, wetting them more with his beast tongue than he ever could have with his human one, and stroking the wetness down over the place he would breach him. He stroked spit over his length as well, his gestures feverish and fumbled, and for a moment he found his body unwieldy in this constitution. When he lined himself up to enter, Genn actually experienced a moment’s hesitation. Beneath him, Nathanos was quivering, nails raking furrows into the wood of the table, and it was strange to see the creature so

_Vulnerable?_

Subjugated. Genn wondered if he would feel the pain at all, or if he might even feel pleasure, and the thought of forcing _any_ sensation out of numb meat sent a lurch of hunger through him.

He pressed himself inside, and Nathanos let out a deep moan that dissolved into a growl. Genn was shocked to feel him rock back on him in a wordless plea for more.

“Such a good pet for a good King,” he groaned, “here to punish me for all the terrible things I’ve done.”

And Light, Genn _loathed_ how sweet he felt, better even than some humans he had fucked. Genn’s claws curled on his back. He closed his eyes, and summoned all his rage, and allowed the adrenaline in his blood to guide his hips as he began to fuck him. His animal shape amplified the pleasure of hearing him huff, and whine, and curse, and Genn could feel that he wasn’t hard but the way he welcomed Genn’s cock betrayed an unexpected truth. Being broken like this filled the undead body with a fever akin to ecstasy, and this pleasure was a mirror image of his own desire to raze and salt the earth that sprawled beneath him. The sound of their bodies colliding on a table became a haunting lovesong to revenge.

This was the closest Genn had come to feeling in control of anything that had happened these past years. He thought in a moment of revelation that Nathanos, as he anticipated the end he had chosen for himself, must feel very much the same. He egged Genn on in the perfect act, an ideal means to an end they both craved – Genn could mark him with the scent of the living, the lingering touch of hot blood and seed, and snatch him away from the Banshee just as she had taken Genn’s most precious thing from him, a long time ago. Nathanos, meanwhile, could corrupt him entirely, and even as he felt himself hurtling towards his climax he tried not to think of what Anduin would say, how Anduin would resent him, if he knew of the bloodlust that flowed heady through his veins. 

Somehow, pitiful Nathanos was the one who came undone first. Even though his flesh did not betray him, Genn could smell the quickening in the air, he could hear the way his voice caught as his bones shivered beneath hot, padded palms. Genn struck true again, allowing himself to become locked fully inside the flesh that clutched him. His release was corroded at the edges, shameful and deep and cathartic, and it throbbed in him deeply with a primal satisfaction. As he returned to himself, he tried to ignore the fact that the pair of them were tied together by his body still. Genn had knotted only two other times in his life, and only in moments of extreme loss of control. He felt no shame in it, but resented that he was unable to extract himself from the meat that was once again completely repulsive to him.

“A gift for your lady,” He bowed down close, to growl into Nathanos’ ear. “A reminder of my ongoing humanity.”

Nathanos made a low noise, one that was not a laugh, but was also not a plea for a swift death, yet.

“A gift for your king,” he murmured, “A broken pet. How will you look the boy in the eye again?”

Genn didn’t want to think about that. 

Finally though, his knot began to relax. He was able to pull back, which he did, before casting off his pelt and stepping into his human body once again. The transformation, as always, was jarring, and he remembered the thought that had occurred to him earlier about Nathanos. About his body, which was not his own. He had bought his continued existence with a pound of flesh, as Genn himself had when Liam died in his arms, and Genn came to the sobering realization that indeed, in both, instances neither of them had truly had a choice.

 _This is what she’s done to us_ , Genn thought. _We are the same, in the deepest of ways, and neither of us can truly be better._

Wordlessly, he tucked his cock back into his trousers, and turned his back on the creature formally known as Nathanos Marris.

He would return to Stormwind as soon as possible, and find some hapless champion to clean up his mess.

**Author's Note:**

> My fave part of this fic is the low-key implication that genn does inscription as a profession because he can use teleportation scrolls. 
> 
> I made this up because I needed some way to get him here efficently and also I do what I want.


End file.
